No Value in Any Influenza Vaccine: Cochrane
Collaboration Study

October 5, 2012

This study is damning of the entire pharmaceutical industry and
its minions, the drug testing industry and the medical system that relies on and
promotes them. Influenza vaccines produce no benefit and cause serious
harm. (Updated article.)

A remarkable study published in the Cochrane Library found no evidence of
benefit for influenza vaccinations. It’s also damns the quality of flu vaccine
studies by saying that the vast majority of trials were inadequate. The authors
stated that the only ones showing benefit were industry-funded. They also
pointed out that the industry-funded studies were more likely to be published in
the most prestigious journals … and one more thing: They found cases of severe
harm caused by the vaccines, in spite of inadequate reporting of adverse
effects.

In the usual scientific journal style of understatement, the authors
concluded:

The results of this review seem to discourage the utilisation of
vaccination against influenza in healthy adults as a routine public health
measure. As healthy adults have a low risk of complications due to
respiratory disease, the use of the vaccine may be only advised as an
individual protection measure against symptoms in specific cases.

The Study

The authors attempted to find and investigate every study that has evaluated
the effects of flu vaccines in healthy adults aged 18-65. To this end, they
“searched Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) (The Cochrane
Library, 2010, issue 2), MEDLINE (January 1966 to June 2010) and EMBASE (1990 to
June 2010).” They included 50 reports. Forty of them were clinical trials adding
up to over 70,000 people. Two reported only on harmful effects and were not
included in this study. Studies of all types of influenza vaccines were
included: live, attenuated, and killed—or fractions of killed—vaccines.

The primary outcomes they looked for were numbers
and seriousness of influenza and influenza-like illnesses. They also looked at
the number and seriousness of harms from the vaccines. The authors attempted to
collect missing data by writing to the individual studies’ authors. They
describe the response as “disappointing”. In the end, they included 50 studies
and refused to use 92, mostly because of highly significant flaws, such as using
inappropriate controls, not being randomly controlled trials, inconsistencies in
data presented, lack of study design, unclear definitions, poor reporting, lack
of crude data, and lack of placebo.

They found no evidence that vaccination prevents viral transmission in
healthy adults! (There goes the whole herd immunity argument!) This
is particularly significant because, as they noted, inactivated vaccines are
known to perform best in healthy adults.

They also found no evidence that flu vaccines prevent complications,
either. They attempted to ascertain the degree of complications, and though
they did report on some, most of the studies simply did not address the
issue or did so inadequately.

*Please note that the article originally read, “reduced influenza-like
symptoms by only 4%”, which was incorrect. The figure has been changed to 12% to
accurately reflect the study’s report.

Conclusions

The Cochrane study found very little evidence to support even a small
improvement in time off work. Even that finding needs to be put into the context
of industry influence. The authors wrote:

This review includes 15 out of 36 trials funded by industry (four had no
funding declaration). An earlier systematic review of 274 influenza vaccine
studies published up to 2007 found industry funded studies were published in
more prestigious journals and cited more than other studies independently
from methodological quality and size. Studies funded from public sources
were significantly less likely to report conclusions favorable to the
vaccines. The review showed that reliable evidence on influenza vaccines is
thin but there is evidence of widespread manipulation of conclusions and
spurious notoriety of the studies. The content and conclusions of this
review should be interpreted in light of this finding.

“…industry funded studies were published in more prestigious journals
and cited more than other studies…”

“…reliable evidence on influenza vaccines is thin…”

“…there is evidence of widespread manipulation of conclusions…”

Most assuredly, the “content and conclusions of this review should be
interpreted in light of this finding”!

Even without taking into account the shoddiness of the studies in general,
the authors were still hard put to find any benefit of any sort for influenza
vaccinations in healthy people. At best, they found a small decrease in number
of days off work. They did not find that the vaccinations had any benefit
whatsoever in complications or mortality.

In spite of the limited reporting on adverse effects, the authors did find
some, including 1.6 Guillain-Barré cases per million.

The question that must be asked is: How can influenza vaccinations be
justified when there is virtually no benefit—not even the oft-cited dubious
herd-immunity—and cases of severe harm are documented, in spite of disgustingly
limited reporting of adverse effects?

It is long past time to end the travesty of jabbing adults and children without
a shred of evidence showing benefit in spite of trying to find it, and
with evidence of crippling harm, in spite of trying to mask it.